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Oceans, memories

”Since my early childhood, I have had a close contact with Portuguese families, whose houses were richly adorned with Portuguese ceramic tiles.

I visited churches and manor houses in the Brazilian states of Bahia, Minas Gerais, São Paulo, Maranhão and Pernambuco, in which the walls were covered with tiles that composed magnificent panels.

Later on, after I got married and while living in Portugal, I submerged myself into the splendor of the ceramic tiling: the Pombal Palace in Oeiras, the National Palace of Queluz, the Church of São Vicente de Fora in Lisbon and the Palace of Marqueses de Fronteira. The balconies of the old Portuguese houses enchanted me: that was where I found the naive touch of the tiles and the popular poets.

The State of Minas Gerais, where I was born, is separated from the Brazilian coast by a succession of mountains - an ocean of blue mountains. During the Colonial period, the roads into the country were very bad. The caravans that transported the tiles from the ports had a very difficult time and, as a consequence, there was a substitution of tiles for copies painted on the walls of chapels, convents and solariums. The copies were painted only in “blue and white”, and the landscapes and pictures were surrounded by golden frames – just like the originals.

Slowly, I noticed that fringes, medallions, vaults, strings, stones and spirals were appearing in the background of my paintings.

My affective memory was untying knots as my unconscious was slowly incorporating it into my work. With the help of a friend, a master in Portuguese ceramic tiling, Mr. Prata, I researched, I created moulds and brought back ancient drawings. I dove deep. I crossed the ocean of blue mountains and brought the tiles into my atelier, into the art galleries and, once again, into the walls of my country”.

Carmem Quintão. May, 2005.

Working in molds of a Portuguese tiler, the painter extracted the maximum from them in a constant questioning - a natural way of whom is seeking the unique experience. And during this process, the effort of no reluctant construction keeps challenging and stimulating Carmem to face her own limits…”

“…The tile is no longer a broad memory, becoming archetypical references on the canvas, bringing Carmem even closer to the esthetic patterns of the Brazilian artistic cultural history, what she could absorb in Portuguese lands and overseas…”

Taken from Marcus Hill texts - Professor of Fine Arts at UFMG, Historian and Curator.

A Tropicalist Tribute

One can feel the taste of Carmem Quintao paintings through their light colors and round shapes. How can we describe this painting which consciousness lies in a recent past?

The titles and associations take us to an anthropology of looks, smells and colors.

The artist is more focused on her own reminiscence. Stimulating fantasies rich in details that are in fact abstract. An abstraction that – with the senses (touch, smell, sight) – needs to get a sensory evidence.

Carmem Quintao reveals the “tropical myth” that is part of a modernist heritage (Tarcila do Amaral).

Carmem shows us the visual evolution of “our natural history” in a retrospective movement with the patience of an artisan.

And so she colorfully tells us about the civilization of nature, our historical place, what lasts beyond.

Sebastião Miguel - Artist and Professor at Guignard School - UEMG – Brazil.

After the Landscapes

Looking at Carmem Quintao’s recent paintings, we face transparences that create interrogative atmospheres along the time. The rare luminosity is primal, and unfolds fluidity, silence, gesture, and dense colors.

The painting has reached a new vibration, where the colorful matter takes us closer to tactile watercolors, with a deep concept and well-balanced chromatic transformations.

The real, in this way recaptured, shows remembrances and memories wisely mirrored by the artist from a Freud’s letter: "... Recollection do not come about at once, rather, they are unfolded thru different periods of time…”

Sebastião Miguel- Artist and Professor at Guignard School – UEMG - Belo Horizonte - Brazil